Information for employers and managers

This section provides information for employers or managers of our registrants. It explains what you should do if you have concerns about a registrant's fitness to practise, and when you should make us aware of any concerns.

Anyone can raise a concern about a registrant. This includes members of the public, employers and managers and other registrants. The police will also normally let us know about criminal proceedings against a registrant.

We will not normally take further action if the information is provided anonymously. This is because we want to operate a fair and clear process and we cannot go back and ask for more information if we do not know who has contacted us. However, as our main function is to protect the public if anonymous information relates to serious and credible concerns about a registrant’s fitness to practise, we will still consider whether it is appropriate to take further action.

We can only consider cases about fitness to practise, which we have explained in more detail here. The types of cases we can consider are those that question whether a registrant’s fitness to practise is ‘impaired’ (negatively affected) by:

misconduct (behaviour which falls short of what can be reasonably expected of a registrant);

a lack of competence (lack of knowledge, skill or judgement, usually repeated and over a period of time) which means a registrant is unfit to practise;

a caution or conviction for an offence in the UK (or somewhere else for an offence that would be a crime if it was committed in England and Wales);

the registrant’s physical or mental health (long-term, untreated or unacknowledged physical or mental health condition); or

a decision made by another regulator responsible for health and social care.

We can also consider allegations about whether an entry to the Register has been made fraudulently or incorrectly. For example, the person may have given us false information when they applied to be registered.

Because our function is to protect the public, there are no time limits and we can consider cases where events may have taken place many years ago, or at a time when the person was not registered. However, we will not normally proceed with concerns that are made more than five years after the events giving rise to them. This is so we can get the best possible evidence about the concerns, for example, witnesses will be able to recall events more easily.

Article 22(6) of the Health and Social Work Professions Order 2001 says that if an allegation is not made in the normal way, we can take the matter forward if it appears that a fitness to practise allegation should be made. This means that even if someone who has referred a matter to us wants to withdraw from the process, we may still take the matter forward.